Today, Apple officiallyannounced the release of the new iPhone 5 to the worlds media.
The iPhone 5 appears to be the most leaked handset in existence. But thankfully, the suspense is over, the next-gen iPhone is finally here and it does, in fact, go by the numerical title of 5.
Just like the parts that have been circulating this is a glass and aluminum affair and, at 7.6mm it's a full 18 percent thinner than the 4S. It's even a full 20 percent lighter at 112g. It's all those amazing things and it packs a larger 4-inch in-cell display. The new version of Apple's Retina panel is 1136 x 640, which clocks in at a more than respectable 326ppi. It also sports better color saturation with full sRGB rendering. That new longer screen allows for an extra set of icons to be displayed on the home screen, and first party apps have already been tweaked to take advantage of the additional real estate.
Apple claims its new A6 chip is a full two times faster than the chip inside the 4S, but we'll have to wait and see how accurate that assertion is. The A6 is reportedly 22 percent smaller than its predecessor, which probably helped Cupertino achieve such slim dimension on the iPhone 5 and it's also more energy efficient -- allowing the handset to chug along for 8 hours of talk time. Keeping your data usage to Wi-Fi will allow you to milk up to 10 hours out of the device.
As for the camera, it's more or less the same as that in the iPhone 4S, just a little bit slimmer. It's a backlit 8 megapixel sensor with a 5 element lens and an f/2.4 aperture. The biggest improvement in the image capturing department is the "shutter" speed. Apple is claiming the new set up is up to 40 percent quicker at turning a beautiful sunset into a cold hard series of 1s and 0s. There's also a new panoramic shooting mode that stitches together an effective 28 megapixel photo. And, what camera update would be complete without the ability to capture 1080p video. The front facing cam has also received a might boost, getting its own backlit sensor capable of capturing 720p clips.
As expected, the dock connector has gotten a long-overdue revamp. The eight-pin plug is 80 percent smaller and all digital -- it even has a catchy marketing name: Lightning. Also available is a new accessory to convert your old dock connectors to the new format